Carl Hiassen - Basket Case

"What's your fucking problem, Tagger?"

"For starters, it's about forty miles long and thirty miles wide."

"Yeah, that's how come we're meeting in the middle. To make sure you ain't bringin' company."

"Jerry, you watch entirely too much TV."

"Write this down, fuckface." He reads me some numbers and instructions for navigating the lake, departing from a marina in Clewiston. I tell him I don't know how to work a GPS.

"Then it's gonna be a long night," he says.

Lake Okeechobee—what unbelievable morons.

"I don't suppose you checked the weather station. What if the boat sinks and the 'package' gets ruined? Ever thought of that, Jer?"

"Then maybe our boat sinks, too. Get the picture?"

He's a lost cause. Time for a different strategy. "Tell Mrs. Stomarti there's a better way to do this. A smarter way."

"She don't care. She won't even be there." Showing uncharacteristic good sense, I'm thinking. Hurriedly Jerry adds, "Anyway, I don't know who you're talkin' about. I never heard a that person." "Golly, you're too slick for me!"

"Eight-thirty," he says again. "Be sure and come alone."

"Where do I get a boat at night?"

"Steal one, you dumbass. That's what I'm doing."

I'm halfway to the elevator when Abkazion intercepts me. The gravity in his voice makes me think he's found out about Emma. That would be a large complication.

"Where you headed, Jack?"

"I've got to meet with a source."

"Better postpone it."

I follow him to his office, the same room where I bonded so warmly with Race Maggad III. Abkazion, however, is a different species of animal. He has no poses or pretensions; he fits comfortably in the newsroom, and his word is usually final. If he knows—and how he would, I can't imagine—that Emma has been kidnapped, it will be damn near impossible to make him back off.

The assertion that I alone can devise her safe return would strike Abkazion as preposterous. Yet that's the pitch I'm preparing to make when he says something startling:

"MacArthur Polk died this morning."

"No way."

"At home," Abkazion says.

"For real?"

"Oh yes."

"How? In his sleep?" I ask pointlessly.

"More or less. You ready to rock and roll?"

The irony, ruinous as it may be, is exquisite.

"I can't do the obit," I inform the managing editor of the Union-Register,

"What're you talking about?"

"I can't miss this meeting today. The source says it's now or never."

Abkazion peers at me as if he's examining for factory defects. "This would be a front-page story, Jack. Your first front-page story in about a thousand years."

"Yes, I'm painfully aware."

"Then you're also aware," he says, "there's a high level of corporate interest in Mr. Polk receiving a first-rate obituary. Not that I'm happy about the meddling but, hey, we learn to pick our battles."

I tell him I'm sorry. "This really sucks, I know."

"For reasons I don't pretend to understand, Mr. Maggad himself has been calling in advance of this story. He is emphatic, Jack, that you should be the one to write it."

"So he told me."

"Which makes it all the more baffling," Abkazion says, the cords of his neck going taut, "as to why you're refusing such an important assignment."

"I told you why."

It's Emma, I want to tell him. I've got to save Emma.

"For Christ's sake, talk to this source of yours. Explain the situation. Tell him to meet you tomorrow instead."

"That's impossible," I say.

"This is for that Slut Puppy story, right? The man's been dead two weeks and your source can't wait one more lousy day to spill his guts? Who is it?" Abkazion is shouting like a hypertensive Little League coach. "What's so goddamn important?"

But I can't tell him. Not about Emma or Cleo, or even about the song. Certainly I can't tell him about Maggad's covert quest to obtain MacArthur Polk's stock holdings, or about my perverse deathbed deal with the old buzzard.

Charles Chickle, Esq., was unequivocal: The trust agreement is contingent on my writing Polk's obituary. By dumping the story, I'm surrendering not just a hundred grand in estate fees but the opportunity of a lifetime—a chance to coerce Race Maggad III into reviving the Union-Register.

Abkazion might be pissed off, but I'm the one who's sick at heart.

"I've gotta go," I tell him.

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Tell Mr. Maggad ... know what? Tell him I threatened to dismember you with needle-nosed pliers. Tell him I went delirious and started quoting from Milton. 'Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones lie scattered on Alpine mountains cold ... '"

"Jack," Abkazion says, "I'm late for the one o'clock."

"Of course."

"You've been waiting for a chance to dig yourself out of this hole. Now take it."

"Yes, chief," I say, exiting with a crisp salute.

It's all here on my desk—the stack of printouts of old stories, the notes from my hospital interview with Polk, the tepid background paragraphs I banged out a few days ago, even the fatuously reverential quote from Race Maggad III.

When I present this armful to Evan, he rolls back his chair and looks up at me guardedly.

"Congratulations, champ," I say. "You're going to be the star of the front page tomorrow."

"I'm sure."

He's a sharp kid. He'll do fine with the story.

"Have a blast," I tell him. "Write your balls off."

"What is this stuff?"

"Listen, the boss'll be asking for me. Tell him I vanished in a blur."

"Jack, wait a minute. Hey, Jack!"

But I'm already gone.

The drive to Lake Okeechobee takes about three hours. Emma likes Sting, so I brought along Synchronicity for the ride home. For now, though, Juan and I are sticking with the Stones. He's stretched out in the backseat, skimming the instructions for the hand-held GPS we bought at a sporting-goods outlet in Fort Pierce. Included in the purchase were a Q-beam spotlight, a waterproof tote, a yellow plastic tarpaulin, a bait bucket and two cheap spinning rods. I will be posing as a fisherman.

When Juan insisted on coming along, I didn't argue. If events take an unpromising turn, levelheaded assistance will be welcome. Also: cojones of steel. We're proceeding on the assumption that Jerry will have somebody in place, watching, when we arrive at the lake. Juan is keeping low, out of sight. Along the way he has confided that he broke off his relationship with Miriam, the beautiful orthopedic surgeon. "The others, too," he said, meaning the figure skater and the halftime dancer for the basketball team. "I've got to buckle down. I've got to focus on the book."

"You're confused," I told him. "It's prizefighters who give up sex. Not writers."

"The sex is the least of it," he said, most seriously.

Clewiston is on the southern rim of the lake, in the heart of sugarcane country. The land is as flat as plywood. As instructed, we seek out a garishly appointed facility called Ernie Bo Tump's Bass Camp. Ernie Bo is an internationally famous conqueror of largemouth bass. He has his own syndicated television program, and a product-endorsement package that would be the envy of an NBA all-star. Ernie Bo's fish camp, however, has fallen on tough times. Farms and cattle ranches have dumped so much shit-fouled runoff into the lake that miles of prime bass habitat have been transformed into impenetrable cattail bogs. The decline in sportfishing commerce has been exacerbated by water levels so treacherously low as to discourage navigation by highspeed fanatics with 175-horsepower outboards—Ernie Bo's bread-and-butter clientele.

This glum tale is related by a young dock hand named Tucker, with whom I am negotiating the rental of a bare fourteen-foot johnboat. While Tucker is gladdened by the sight of a paying customer, he's concerned that I'm launching so late in the afternoon. He advises that the craft must be returned no later than one hour after sunset. I hope he doesn't intend to wait.